Top Surface Quotes & Sayings

Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you'll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.
That is what happened when Denna smiled at me. — Patrick Rothfuss

The white marble surface was inlaid with semiprecious stones in seamless floral designs and in chaste calligraphy, shaped stones, jeweled stones, delicate and free-figured. The surface ran cool and smooth. Traceries of black Koranic figures covered the longer sides of the tomb with a smaller group on top. My hand moved slowly over the words, feeling for breaks between the inlay and marble, not to fault the craftsmen, of course, but only to find the human labor, the individual, in the wholeness and beauty of the tomb. — Don DeLillo

When the earliest Vikings started moving into the northern oceans, there's one story about finding this huge fuckin opening at the top of the world, this deep whirlpool that'd take you down and in, like a black hole, no way to escape. These days you look at the surface Web, all that yakking, all the goods for sale, the spammers and spielers and idle fingers, all in the same desperate scramble they like to call an economy. Meantime, down here, sooner or later someplace deep, there has to be a horizon between coded and codeless. An abyss."
"That's what you're looking for?"
"Some of us are." Avatars do not do wistful, but Maxine catches something. "Others are trying to avoid it. Depends what you're into. — Thomas Pynchon

What's a space elevator? Simply described, it's a thin ribbon, about 3 feet wide and 60 thousand miles long, stretching upwards from the surface of the Earth. The lower end is bolted to a heavy anchor (think of an oil drilling platform), and the top is capped with a counterweight. — Seth Shostak

Remember my experiments with the RTG and having a hot bath? Same principle, but I came up with an improvement: submerge the RTG. No heat will be wasted that way. I started with a large rigid sample container (or "plastic box" to people who don't work at NASA). I ran a tube through the open top and down the inside wall. Then I coiled it in the bottom to make a spiral. I glued it in place like that and sealed the end. Using my smallest drill bit, I put dozens of little holes in the coil. The idea is for the freezing return air from the regulator to pass through the water as a bunch of little bubbles. The increased surface area will get the heat into the air better. Then I got a medium flexible sample container ("Ziploc bag") and tried to seal the RTG in it. But the RTG has an irregular shape, and I couldn't get all the air out of the bag. I can't allow any air in there. — Andy Weir

She wandered over to the enclosed range, a rather modern-looking contraption that Cook had purchased earlier in the year.
"Do you know how to work this?" she asked.
"No idea. You? "
Daphne shook her head. "None." She reached forward and gingerly touched the surface of the stove top. "It's not hot. "
" Not even a little bit? "
She shook her head. "It's rather cold, actually. "
Brother and sister were silent for a few seconds .
" You know," Anthony finally said, "cold milk might be quite refreshing ."
" I was just thinking that very thing! — Julia Quinn

Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever before
Stoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared. — Cole Alpaugh

Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The future. — Victor Hugo

The dream clung to her. Her sleep had been full of Jupiter ever since the survey last week: that overwhelming, unstoppable girth; the swirling patterns of the atmosphere, dark belts and light stripes rolling in circular rivers of ammonia crystal clouds; every shade of orange in the spectrum, from soft, sand-coloured regions to vivid streams of molten vermilion; the breathtaking speed of a ten-hour orbit, whipping around and around the planet like a spinning top; the opaque surface, simmering and roaring in century-old tempests. And the moons! The ancient, pockmarked skin of Callisto and the icy crust of Ganymede. The rusty cracks of Europa's subterranean oceans. The volcanoes of Io, magma fireworks leaping up from the surface. — Lily Brooks-Dalton

Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mound of countless generations, and not from any top dressing capriciously scattered over the surface. — James Russell Lowell

She worked briskly and efficiently, taking her brush and pan from the drawing-room to the top of the stairs and making her way back down, a step at a time; after that she filled a bucket with water, fetched her kneeling-mat, and began to wash the hall floor. Vinegar was all she used. Soap left streaks on the black tiles. The first, wet rub was important for loosening the dirt, but it was the second bit that really counted, passing the wrung cloth over the floor in one supple, unbroken movement ... There! How pleasing each glossy tile was. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried; but everything faded. The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs. — Sarah Waters

The skull sat on top of an old Stop sign. Someone had painted the surface of the octagon white and written KEEP OUT across it in large jagged letters. A reddish-brown splatter stained the bottom edge, looking suspiciously like dried blood. I leaned closer. Yep, blood. Some hair, too. Human hair.
Curran frowned at the sign. "Do you think he's trying to tell us something?"
"I don't know. He's being so subtle about it. — Ilona Andrews

Four houndred billion suns spiraling through space together. Our solar system just one grain on that galactic carousel. The carousel itself a speck in the cosmos. And here I am in this small clearing, on the surface of the heart, as transient and unnoticed to the universe as the dry blades of grass that are poking into my shirt. It's too much to comprehend up there, too enormous, and I'm so small when it's on top of me. It frightens me, like I'm being crushed. — Elizabeth Fama

Men on the surface of a planet are as helpless against men in spaceships as a man would be trying to conduct a rock-throwing fight from the bottom of a well. The man at the top of the well has gravity working for him. — Robert A. Heinlein

It's like, imagine the ripples on top of an ocean. And I'm in a rowboat, reactively dealing with the waves and water coming into my boat. What I need to do is dive into the deeper solace, the calmness beneath the surface. — Mehmet Oz

Night lay upon the forest. There was no moon, but the stars of Silverpelt shed their frosty glitter over the trees. At the bottom of a rocky hollow, a pool reflected the starshine. The air was heavy with the scents of late greenleaf. Wind sighed softly through the trees and ruffled the quiet surface of the pool. At the top of the hollow, the fronds of bracken parted to reveal a cat; her bluish grey fur glimmered as she stepped delicately from rock to rock, down to the water's edge. Sitting on a flat stone that jutted out over the pool, she raised her head to look around. As if at a signal, more cats began to appear, slipping into the hollow from every direction. They padded down to sit as close to the water as they could, until the lower slopes were filled with lithe shapes gazing down into the pool. — Erin Hunter

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach.
In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater. — Victoria Kahler

Crossed the room to where a selection of implements was arranged on a table top. These could have been mistaken for the trade tools of a cook, physician, or torturer, save for the fact that the surface on which they rested was a slab of polished pink marble, topping a white and gilt dressing table-cum-sculpture, done up in the new, hyper-Baroque style named Rococo. It was adorned, for example, with several cherubs, bows drawn, eyes asquint, as they drew beads on unseen targets, butt cheeks polished to a luster with jeweler's rouge. It had, in other words, all the earmarks of a gift that had been sent to the princess by someone with a lot of money who did not know her very well. — Neal Stephenson

Photography's about the surface, what's happening at the top of the sea. Literature's about all the stuff below. — Max Pam

One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully. — Sir Arthur Sullivan

Scones (flavoured with outrage, optional - see "My Story") Mix together: 2 cups flour 4 t. baking powder ¾ t. salt 2-4 T. sugar (depending on whether scones are to be sweet or savoury) Cut into the flour mixture: 1/3 cup butter When the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs, add any flavourings (handful of grated cheese with herbs, and green onions; lemon rind; dried cranberries, currents, or blueberries, etc). Beat together: ¾ cup milk or cream 1 egg Stir into the dry mixture. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead three or four times, then roll out to ¾ inch thick and cut into circles with cutter, or pat into one large circle and cut that into wedges. Bake at 400 degrees 15 minutes, or until golden. Can brush the top with egg and sprinkle with coarse sugar before baking, if desired. Some — Laurie R. King

From the outside looking in, i think my life would appear very isolated, occupying a huge empty space, with hollow-sounding, emotional echoes. But in reality, this solitary sanctuary i inhabit, allows my artistic nature to sing at the top of its lungs. My feelings have the space they need to breathe. And my art can gain the momentum, it requires, to bubble up to the surface of consciousness. For me, creativity is a chaotic and quiet hybrid, an entity that seeks a safe place to call home. — Jaeda DeWalt

I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I'm very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off.
I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watch. — Iain Banks

There exists a great uncertainty that comes with life. It is like a tree, its roots formed below the surface, its body penetrating a layer of top soil, its roots spreading outward, and affecting the domain it inhabits. With this natural uncertainty one feels lost, almost incapable of discovering his or her own true purpose. With all of this, one begins to search for that true purpose, always unsure if it is the right path. These feelings come from within, fueled by a catalyst that instills these doubts. However, with its great power, the catalyst is undefinable and unyielding. It is then within question if one can truly move away from the catalyst or really understand how one should feel when affected by it. — Aubrey Williams

A person should be buried only half a meter, or two feet, below the surface. Then a tree should be planted there. He should be buried in a coffin that decays so that when you plant a tree on top the tree will take something out of his substance and change it into tree-substance. When you visit the grave you don't visit a dead man, you visit a living being who was just transformed into a tree. You say, "This is my grandfather, the tree is growing well, fantastic." You can develop a beautiful forest that will be more beautiful than a normal forest because the trees will have their roots in graves. It will be a park, a place for pleasure, a place to live, even a place to hunt. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Emerging, as we had, from the dark and gloomy bowels of the earth, the scene before us presented a view of wondrous beauty, and, while doubtless enhanced by contrast, it was nevertheless such an aspect as is seldom given to the eyes, of a Barsoomian of today to view. To me it seemed a little garden spot upon a dying world preserved from an ancient era when Barsoom was young and meteorological conditions were such as to favor the growth of vegetation that has since become extinct over practically the entire area of the planet. In this deep valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, the atmosphere doubtless was considerably denser than upon the surface of the planet above. The sun's days were reflected by the lofty escarpment, which must also hold the heat during the colder periods of night, and, in addition to this, there was ample water for irrigation which nature might easily have achieved through percolation of the waters of the river through and beneath the top soil of the valley. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so. — David Attenborough

Another part of the ritual was to ascend with closed eyes. 'Step, step, step,' came my mother's voice as she led me up - and sure enough, the surface of the next tread would receive the blind child's confident foot; all one had to do was lift it a little higher than usual, so as to avoid stubbing one's toe against the riser. This slow, somewhat somnambulistic ascension in self-engendered darkness held obvious delights. The keenest of them was not knowing when the last step would come. At the top of the stairs, one's foot would be automatically lifted to the deceptive call of 'Step,' and then, with a momentary sense of exquisite panic, with a wild contraction of muscles, would sink into the phantasm of a step, padded, as it were, with the infinitely elastic stuff of its own nonexistence. — Vladimir Nabokov

The stacks of pav have been sprinkled with chutney -
the top half of the inside of the bun is bathed in green chutney, the bottom with red garlic chutney -
and the assistant reaches out with one hand, in one continuous arc of his arm opening the pav, scooping up two of the vadas, one in each nest of pav, and delivering it to the hungry customer. I walk away from the stall and crush the vada by pressing down on it with the pav; little cracks appear in the crispy surface, and the vada oozes out its potato-and-pea mixture. I eat. The crispy batter, the mouthful of sweet-soft pav tempering the heat of the chutney, the spices of the vada mixture - dark with garam masala and studded with whole cloves of garlic that look like cashews - get masticated into a good mouthful, a good mouth-feel. My stomach is getting filled, and I feel I am eating something nourishing after a long spell of sobbing. Borkar has done his dharma. — Suketu Mehta

Toward the small pond that he had seen before. The walls of fire ended there. An instant later the remains of the cottage exploded. He ducked and rolled again from the concussive force, almost pitching into the right side of the wall of fire. He rose and redoubled his efforts, thinking that he would reach the water. Water was a great antidote to fire. But as he neared the edge of the pond, something struck him. No scum. No algae on the surface although the ground around was full of it. What could kill green scum? And why was he being forced to run right toward the one thing that could possibly save him? Robie tossed his gun over the top of the wall of flames, pulled off his jacket, covered his head and hands with it, and threw himself through the wall of flames on the left side. — David Baldacci

Filming 'Doctor Who' is so incredibly different to 'Spooks.' Near to the surface, there's quite a silly atmosphere. A lot of the times, you're on the verge of giggles because it's so over the top. — Miranda Raison

top-to-bottom" change) (Fig.10-75). There may or may not be a thin layer of keratin on the surface. The epithelium may be hyperplastic or atrophic. Some authorities consider this entity to be a precancerous — Anonymous

I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers. — Sarah Dessen

Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. — Hans Christian Andersen

Always question what other things than the top layer are proceeding on beneath. — Jay Woodman

Shame isn't a quiet grey cloud, shame is a drowning man who claws his way on top of you, scratching and tearing your skin, pushing you under the surface. — Kirsty Eagar

She will toss the leaves in a wooden bowl with a micro spray of olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the insanely expensive balsamic vinegar that she bought at the gourmet store, so viscous it drips in a slow, thick stream. A tomato. A Persian cucumber. These will emerge, pristine, from her tiny refrigerator, chilled, perfect. She will slice them thinly and fan them into beautiful patterns, a vegetable mandala, courtesy of the mandoline, a feast for the eyes. She will hand-crumple Parmigiano Reggiano onto the top, and then, from on high, she will brandish the mill and grind coarse crystals of pink salt form the Himalayas into fine, sparkly shavings that will float, like snowflakes, onto the pale green surface of her salad. — Janice Y.K. Lee

FROM TIME TO TIME, there was talk among the astronauts that it might be nice to have a drink with dinner. Beer is a no-fly, because without gravity, carbonation bubbles don't rise to the surface. "You just get a foamy froth," says Bourland. He says Coke spent $450,000 developing a zero-gravity dispenser, only to be undone by biology. Since bubbles also don't rise to the top of a stomach, the astronauts had trouble burping. "Often a burp is accompanied by a liquid spray," Bourland adds. — Mary Roach

The craft passed directly below Scathach and she released her grip and dropped onto the top of the vimana alongside Joan with enough force to send the larger craft plunging down. The French immortal laughed. "So nice of you-"
"Don't you dare crack any dropping-in jokes," Scathach warned before her friend could finish.
The vimana dipped and spun, but the two women had firm grips on the transparent dome and held on while the pilot tilted the craft,attempting to shake them off.
"So long as he doesn't get too close to the lava," Scatty said, "we should be okay."
At that moment the vimana dropped straight down, zooming dangerously close to the lava's sluggish bubbling surface.
"I think he heard you," Joan said, coughing as the air became almost unbreathable. — Michael Scott

Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie. — Joss Whedon

Here there is left a tenuous subterfuge, 875 which Anaxagoras seizes: think of things as mixtures of everything, all concealed but one that shows - the one that's mixed in largest measure and close to the surface and placed right at the top. — Titus Lucretius Carus

Here's the advantage of being water: It's forgiving and ever-changing and unpredictable and strong-willed. It's stronger than rock; it can wear it down or move it or break it, or slowly seep through the surface. It can flow around anything and through anything or under or on top. It can change into so many forms. It can be so calm it's invisible, so wild it's uncontainable. It can smother fire with one spray.
But here is the weakness: People with water are susceptible to drought. We can run dry, and when we do, we shrink, until something replenishes us. We rely on others. We need love and support. When we're not fed, we become a bit calloused and cracked, like dry skin. We wither, we wrinkle, and we can disappear inside ruts, until we flow again. — Katie Kacvinsky

I proved that I can win the Grand Slams. I proved that I can last four and a half hours and come out on top against one of the strongest guys physically that tennis had probably seen especially on this surface. So they would probably be the things that I would say I have learned tonight: To not doubt myself physically and mentally from now on. — Andy Murray

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions, decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below. — Eric Johnston

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp.
The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes? — Debra Holland

We have to recognize that we're nothing, the Pastor says. In the surface world, when they returned from the mine and showered and entered their homes, they were princes, kings, spoiled sons, well-fed fathers, Romeos. They believed their private worlds of home and family spun thanks to their labor, and that as workingmen and breadwinners they had every right to expect their world to revolve around their needs. Now the heart of the mountain has collapsed on top of them, and they are trapped by a block of stone, an object whose newness and perfection suggest, to some, a divine judgment. — Hector Tobar

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

Stay quiet and the noisy surface dialogues will cease.
Then the substratum will rise up to the top.
It is simple.
Follow this. — H.W.L. Poonja

Let it them be put into any clean oven vessel of china or stoneware which should be wider at the top than at the bottom. so that there may be the largest surface above to favor the evaporation. — James Lind

The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious. There are objects approximating the shape of a disc, some of which appear flat on bottom and domed on top. These objects are as large as man-made aircraft and have a metallic or light-reflecting surface. Further they exhibit extreme rates of climb and maneuverability with no associated sound and take action which must be considered evasive when contacted by aircraft and radar. — Nathan Farragut Twining

The river seems to be holding itself up before you like a page opened to be read. There is no knowing how the currents move. They shift and boil and eddy. They are swifter in some places than in others. To think of 'a place' on the flowing surface soon baffles your mind, for the 'places' are ever changing and moving. The current in all its various motions and speeds flows along, and that flowing may be stirred again at the surface by the wind in all its various motions. Who can think of it? Maybe the ducks have mastered it, and the little grebes who are as much at home underneath as on top and who ride the currents for pleasure. — Wendell Berry

I sighed, sinking back, head filling with pleasant images; pictures Pietr floated to the surface. Kisses scorched along my face and neck. "Pietr ... "
There was a growl, and I felt fingers at the waistband of my jeans. The button opened and a hand traced along the top of my underpants.
"No," I said. The kissing resumed, harder. "Jessica." The word rumbled in someone's throat. Not Pietr's. To him, I was Jess.
"No," I insisted, trying to pry my eyes open. Something was wrong ... Not Pietr ... I pushed at the chest above me, my eyelids stinging as I willed them apart.
"Relax ... " a voice said, lips dragging along the cornerof my jaw, filling my head with honey, sticky and sweet ... — Shannon Delany